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Hey Citizens! This is the transcript for Around the ‘Verse – Episode 4. Thanks to /u/Shadow703793 for giving us access to his collection of transcripts. Weekly Review Monthly Newsletter was released Gamescom tickets up for sale...

Hey Citizens! This is the transcript for Around the ‘Verse – Episode 4. Thanks to /u/Shadow703793 for giving us access to his collection of transcripts.

Weekly Review

Monthly Newsletter was released

Gamescom tickets up for sale, almost sold out

Looking to shoot Around the Verse around Cologne area around Gamescom time

Trying to get a booth at Gamescom

News from Around the Verse

Arena Commander

Rolling out more MP slots

UK Team developing new game mode called New Horizons

Balancing and fixing bugs on Capture the Core

Reducing friendly fire hits from the allies

Audio improvements

Ship component system being expanded

Lots of server side fixes

Squadron 42

Focusing on Mission 4

Localization improvements

Multicrew ship Seat Action

Behavior Interactive

Working on Avatar system

Working and improving internal development tools

Heavy UI work on Firing range and MobiGlas

Asteroid hangar is so close to being done

Improvements to existing hangars and conversion to the room system

Next hangar flair item being worked on

Ship Pipeline

Concept work on 890 Jump was completed

Updated Avenger with remodel and retexturing, should be in the Hangar soon.

Cutlass variants already in progress

Internals on the Idris is getting worked on with main focus on rooms that’ll be used in SQ42

Constellation variants are ongoing work in progress with focus on damage states and integration of multi-player rooms such as the generator room, cargo space, and more

Vanduul Bomber concept is completed and moving to production

Concepts phase for other ships including some unreleased ships players don’t know about

Expect to see some concepts for the Orion and Carrack sometime in the future

Mark Abent Interview

What has been the most frustrating or most memorable bug you’ve come across so far as a programmer?

There’s a current bug in Multiplayer where the character gets stuck in a funny pose when the player spawns in. This bug seems to happen only at spawn and if the player is lagging. Currently Mark and the other programmers haven’t been able to replicate the bug but QA is able to replicate it.

How many years have you been programming, what languages have you used and what type of programs have you worked on prior to Star Citizen?

Started programming in 1998 by modding Half Life. Mark has worked on Black Mesa Source, then moved on to Insurgency and after that got in to CIG. Marks mainly works with C++ but has worked with Python and Perl.

As a gameplay programmer, my understanding is that your focus is more on the game’s strategy and how to implement the mechanics to create the feel of the game. Chris Roberts has been clear on his vision for SC, to date which part of the vision has been the hardest to get the feel right for the game?

The hardest part is getting the ships to work in multiplayer. Chris’s vision wants very complex interaction with ships which is easy to do in single player, but quite complex in multi-player because you have to take in to account the synching and other backend network stuff.

DFM/AC has been running pretty well and it lead me to wonder how many process threads are used to calculate and simulate the physics related articles in DFM/AC? Ie. Each thruster in use, delta of the player and NPCs, counter inertia from rapid firing of weapons, crashing, etc. Are each of these separated on their own process? Are they grouped?

There are two threads for physics. Any time there’s any physics interaction the game would use one of these threads to execute the job. There’s a main game thread which handles all the game logic for weapons and ships. The thrusters have to be on both the physics and main thread which does cause issues. The main thread handles things like how the thrusters are attached, overheating, weapons detaching, etc. Mark works closely with John Pritchett to sort out the physics and main game thread issues.